It was the work of a few seconds to retrieve the hot nuts, and no visible damage was done to the fruit or the basket. To Thackeray it was a wholly mysterious incident, but he contained his curiosity until Miss Probert had set off again along Hill Street on her errand. ‘Why did you do it, Sarge?’ he asked, biting with relish into a chestnut.
‘I wanted to see what was under that layer of oranges. Didn’t you notice?’
‘Yes, Sarge. A lady’s hairbrush and comb. There’s nothing extraordinary in that, is there?’
‘That’s a matter I want you to investigate, Constable. Follow Miss Probert and find out where she goes. You’d better leave the nuts with me, or she’ll smell you coming a mile off.’
CHAPTER 11
Now mark! To be precise -
Though I say, ‘lies’ all these, at the first stage,
’Tis just for science’ sake:
Cribb had secured an inside seat between a large woman muffled in furs and a small boy occupied in scooping straw off the floor, shredding it and depositing pieces on the other passengers’ clothes. It was not the best position on the bus, but it was preferable to the knifeboard upstairs. Common courtesy threatened to deprive him of his seat before long; there was sure to be some shopgirl late for work waving the driver down in Kew or Turnham Green. But he had privately resolved to see the small boy sitting on his mother’s lap first. With that satisfying thought, he started on Thackeray’s bag of chestnuts.
He considered what he had learnt from Alice Probert. In some particulars she was not to be relied upon-notably her experiences with invisible hands-but this morning’s revelation that Brand had visited the house on Friday had escaped her lips before she realised its significance. Her consequent embarrassment had been genuine, no doubt of that. What she had said stamped Dr Probert as a liar. He had firmly stated that Brand did not visit the house to examine the chair before Saturday.
The difficulty in dealing with Probert was that he was so easy to dislike. Cribb had handled him with kid gloves so far not because he was a friend of Inspector Jowett, but because antagonism towards a witness could lead to errors of judgement. It wanted guarding against. Probert was a liar, but that did not necessarily make him a murderer.
But why should he have lied at all about Brand’s visit to the house? On the face of it, there was nothing sinister in a medium taking a preview of the place where he was to conduct a seance, particularly when the conditions were so unusual. It was questionable whether anyone would consent to being part of an electrical circuit without inspecting the apparatus first. People like Strathmore, dedicated to eliminating every possibility of fraud, might argue that seeing the apparatus in advance gave the medium the opportunity of devising some means of cheating science, but Cribb was not Strathmore; he was investigating a possible murder, not a manifestation. There were more important things at issue now than the validity of an experiment.
Obviously there was a reason why Probert did not wish it to be known that Brand had come to the house. The visit showed Probert-or someone he wished to protect-in an unfavourable light. It could well be connected with something Cribb had turned over in his mind repeatedly since the post mortem. There was reason to suspect that Dr Probert, like Miss Crush, had knowingly assisted Peter Brand in his deceptions.
Anyone unacquainted with Cribb’s reasoning on this question could be forgiven for regarding the suggestion as monstrous. Would Probert have gone to the trouble of setting up an elaborate experiment in order to nullify its results by cheating? Cribb’s understanding of events suggested exactly that. At the seance when the spirit hand had seemed to materialise, Probert had been seated next to the medium, holding his left hand. Was it not likely that whilst Brand’s right hand, coated with Blue John, and helpfully liberated by Miss Crush, was describing convolutions in the air, slight pressures and tensions would have been transmitted by his left? And even if Probert could not see the rest of Brand’s arm from so close a range, would he not have heard movements of his sleeve and shirt-cuff? More suggestive still were the oranges that had been flung at Nye. If it was accepted that they were not propelled by some supernatural agency, then either Miss Crush had thrown them with her left hand (an unlikely achievement), or Brand had used his right and nobody had noticed the Blue John on it (equally unlikely) or Dr Probert had something to do with it. The bowl containing the oranges had rested on a tripod table within reach of his right hand or Brand’s left.
If Probert had conspired with Brand, there had to be an explanation for it. From what Cribb had learnt so far of Brand’s modus operandi it was probably blackmail. And the chances were high that on the Friday evening when Brand had gone to Probert’s house to view the apparatus, he had announced his terms. Some dark secret was to be preserved provided Probert, like Miss Crush, co-operated in producing spiritualistic phenomena.
The bus slowed to pick up a passenger, the brake-shoes rasping against the iron tyres. It was a nurse, probably bound for Charing Cross Hospital. Before she approached the platform, Cribb unpeeled the largest chestnut in the bag and offered it to the small boy. Just as the little fist was about to claim it, his mother whisked the child protectively on to her lap, and a seat was provided for the nurse.
It was difficult to imagine the sort of indiscretion that could have made Dr Probert susceptible to blackmail. Unlike Miss Crush, his standing in society was not threatened if a youthful peccadillo came to light. Nor was his marriage. That first conversation with Mrs Probert, before Cribb met the doctor, had convinced him that she was indifferent to her husband’s extramarital distractions, whether they were naked goddesses or dancers from the music hall. No, it was some other thing with Dr Probert. Cribb had a shrewd idea that he would know what it was before the day was through.
For the rest of the journey he managed to retain his seat on the lower deck. From Turnham Green onwards his thoughts were on Mr Henry Strathmore, whom he had decided to interview next.
The London Directory gave the address of the Life After Death Society as Albemarle Street, as respectable a location as you could hope to find. The chambers were on the second floor, appropriately enough above the Veterans’ Club. Cribb’s knock was answered by a timid-looking young woman who explained that she was only the typewriter and Mr Strathmore was at lunch. She would be obliged if Cribb would come back at two o’clock. He consulted his watch. It was a quarter to two. He handed her his bowler and said he would wait.
‘The gentleman insisted on waiting,’ explained the typewriter apologetically when the door opened, exactly fifteen minutes later.
Strathmore jammed his monocle into place. ‘I remember you. The gentleman from Scotland-er-won’t you come into my office? Kindly step this way.’
His office would have been like any other but for the picture on the wall behind him. Instead of a portrait of the founder, it was a line-engraving of Daniel Home in horizontal levitation.
From the expression on his face Strathmore would dearly have liked to practise levitation himself at that moment, clean out of the window, down Albemarle Street and away along Piccadilly. ‘What contingency has brought you to this office, Sergeant?’ he asked.
‘Mr Brand’s death, sir,’ said Cribb, as encouragingly as he could. ‘Inspector Jowett has asked me to inquire into the circumstances.’
‘Jowett, yes,’ said Strathmore, as if something slightly offensive had been mentioned. ‘You know, it was quite a shock to learn that Jowett was a peeler. I thought he was a senior Civil Servant at the very least.’